Wednesday, April 20, 2016

(A print version of this interview is available here)As the use of green open access policies looks increasingly like a
failed strategy, and as universities, research funders, and governments in
Europe seek to engineer a mass “flipping” of subscription journals to gold OA,
has the open access movement reached a watershed moment?

If so, how will it develop from here, is it headed in the right
direction, and who should be leading the way?

One remarkable thing about the OA movement is that it has primarily been
driven by people other than researchers.

The President of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, José van Dijckdrew attention to this recently when she
pointed out that the debate about open access has been mostly about what
university administrators, librarians, government, funding organizations and
publishers think, not what researchers think, or need.

Yet it is researchers
who create, quality check, and consume the papers that make up scholarly
journals. They are the originators of, and primary audience for, the literature, so should they not have a large say in how scholarly
communication develops?

As the financial consequences of gold OA become apparent, and as
researchers are confronted with ever more onerous bureaucratic rules (policies)
requiring them to make their work OA, however, this is likely to change. Certainly we
can see researchers beginning to take more of an interest in the topic, and the signs
are that they are not at all happy with the mess and confusion created by the
OA movement.

Might we, therefore, see researchers become the foot soldiers of the
next battle in the revolution the OA movement began? And might they want to do things somewhat differently?

If so, given his credentials who could claim to be better
qualified to lead the troops over the top than Sir Timothy Gowers?

Read the Q&A in the linked pdf and see if you agree. The interview
is prefaced with an introduction.